With this act of submission ends the first period of Ragusan history, during which the possession, or rather suzerainty over the city was a matter of dispute between the Venetians and the Greeks, with intervals of absolute independence, and four years of Norman rule. As, however, Byzantine influence, not necessarily political, predominates even in Venice itself, we may call this the Byzantine period. For the next hundred and fifty years, save for one short interruption, Ragusa remains under Venetian supremacy. An important question in connection with the growth of Ragusa is its ecclesiastical history. Native historians have attempted to prove that the city was an archiepiscopal see from the earliest times, and that it succeeded to Salona, whence some of its first settlers had come, as the metropolis of all Dalmatia. This latter contention proving quite untenable (the Archbishop of Salona, together with the majority of the surviving inhabitants, took refuge at Spalato, which became an archiepiscopal see in consequence), they declare that the Ragusan archbishops had succeeded to those of Doclea. That city, they assert, had been destroyed by the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel, and its archbishop fled to Ragusa, which became _ipso facto_ an archiepiscopal see. A more accurate account is that contained in the _Illyricum Sacrum_ of Farlati. Doclea was destroyed, not by Samuel, who became Tsar of the Bulgarians in 976, but by Simeon. In fact Porphyrogenitus, who wrote in 949, mentions the event as having occurred during his own lifetime. According to the _Illyricum Sacrum_ the exact date was 926. John (the archbishop) actually did take refuge at Ragusa, where, on the death of the local bishop, he succeeded to the see, retaining his superior title by courtesy. His successors wished to continue in the dignity, and even began to assume metropolitan authority, refusing to obey the archbishop of Spalato. The dispute lasted many years, and the bishops of the newly-created see of Antivari[85] claimed that they were the true successors to the archbishops of Doclea. Pope Gregory VII. apparently refers to these contentions in his Epistle to Michael, King of the Slaves.[86] The Roman Pontiff hereby summons “Peter, bishop of Antivari, the bishop of Ragusa, and other suitable witnesses, by means of whom the contention between the archbishop of Spalato and Ragusa[87] may be judicially examined and canonically defined,” to repair to the Holy See. What Gregory’s decision was we are not informed, but in the end the see of Ragusa was separated from that of Spalato and erected into an archbishopric with metropolitan authority. The same thing was done in the case of Antivari. Thus by the thirteenth century we find that Dalmatia was divided into three ecclesiastical provinces. The reasons why the Ragusans were so anxious to have an archbishopric of their own were political not less than religious. We have seen how